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The Words of 2011

Word cloud of Pres. Obama's speech to Congress on jobs on September 8, 2011
(Created at wordle.com)

Wordsmith Ben Zimmer talks about the year in words—from "occupy" to "supercommittee" to "bunga bunga" to "tiger mother." He'll also look at some of the phrases, like "leading from behind" and "win the future" to tell us what the national vocabulary reveals about 2011. Ben Zimmer writes a biweekly language column for the Boston Globe and is the former "On Language" columnist for The New York Times Magazine. He's also executive producer of VisualThesaurus.com and Vocabulary.com.

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Comments [12]

Peter Talbot
from Harrison, NJ

Fascinated to hear that lexicography is a business separate from academic pursuit: live and loin. Delighted to hear the glimmer of discussion of connotation vs. denotation in the challenge of translation. Occupy as a noun (usually in the plural) is largely due to the fact that those whom it represents have so many competing means of self definition that they are deliberately trying to defeat stereotyping. Hoovervilles were similarly named as a result of a paucity of agreement as to why the unemployed congregated in public parks, built tents and protested their poverty, causing a violent eviction. Building on the earlier precedent, we could call them Bushtowns, but the media being controlled today by the Bushbergs, Murdochians and Bachmaniacs among the editorial staffs apparently put the quash on this. The use of Occupy as a noun is weak in English, and seems partially to connote derision of the occupiers to marginalize their protest.

to Amy Heller of NJ, see The Word Made Flesh (http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0061997404/ref=pd_lpo_k2_dp_sr_2?pf_rd_p=486539851&pf_rd_s=lpo-top-stripe-1&pf_rd_t=201&pf_rd_i=0810970503&pf_rd_m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&pf_rd_r=07GH5CW9W7V7E6AJEYZB)

My comment is not about neologisms but is, instead, in response to the comment about whether the structure of a language influences how we think and perceive.

When I was in college and a language major, I was fascinated by the difference in saying, as we do, "I am drowning" as opposed to "the water is killing me" as in one of the native American languages (I do not remember which; I am 64.) but I became convinced that this difference is related to different views as to our place in nature and our relationship to it as well as to the attitudes that have led to global warming, etc.

My ex-husband was a high school english teacher and was often bemoaning the decline of the english language. He did not like new uses of words, for instance taking a noun and using it as a verb. My question is: do you feel that language is a flexible , changing thing or that we should all still be speaking the 'king's english?'

I'm personally obsessed with how the "#" or hashtag has been integrated into our lexicon. I find them humorous when used at the end of a sentence to punctuate the idea. I guess we should say, "Thanks, Twitter?"

"Occupy" is also being used for non-physical things now. For example, 1 of the groups that were involved in the Yom Kippur Kol Nidre service & building the sukkah at Zuccotti Park (or Sukkot-i Park?) is called OccupyJudaism.

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